Three's a Crowd

Estimating the number of people at any march or event with political overtones is a thankless task for the police who these days usually just give into the organisers inflated figures to keep the peace. After all does it really matter if 10,000 people or 30,000 people attended a rally? I once considered setting up an company which would independently estimate the numbers attending rallies and marches and charge the organisers for being able to provide reliable figures. Then I realised the flaw in this plan. The organisers have no interest in a reliable estimate. From their point of view the more the merrier.

In fact ever since Jesus claimed to have fed 5000 people with enough food for 50 the controversies have raged. The organisers of the Million Man March in Washington DC in 1995 estimated that 1.5-2m people attended whereas the D.C. Park Service estimated 837,000 (+-20%) based on aerial photographs. Amid claims of racism and threats to sue the Park Service never provided estimates of marcher numbers ever again. But they stuck to their original estimate nonetheless.

One such figure I have been a bit obsessed with for years is the Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardis Gras. The attendance figure at the parade has been variously quoted as between 300,000 and 1 million people (the latter in the heady days of the pre-Howard government Gay-B-C). It seems to have settled down to 400,000 this year.

I happen to think its relatively easy to come up with a ball park figure in this case. The Mardi Gras Parade route is about 1500m long. If you allow 2 spectators per metre (remember gay people are thinner so can more easily bunch up) on each side then this is 6000 people at the front of the parade. Based on photos I have seen in the thickest parts of the parade (in terms of numbers, not where the people from Newtown stand) the crowd is about 20 deep and about 10 deep in others so lets say 15 deep on average on both sides. So thats 15 x 2 x 2 x 1500 = 90,000 people. Allowing for various late arrivals and a generous margin for error lets say 120,000. Far less than the 400,000 claimed by the organisers. In fact for the organisers figure to be accurate would require the crowd to be over 50 deep on either side.

Of course it would be churlish of anyone to play into the hands of the bigots and contradict the official figure. Even the police are avowedly on the side of the participants. Yes it would take a brave blogger indeed to stand up, to count and be counted (even a gay one like yours truly).

Omerta and a Question of Loyalty

Loyalty Cards are a modern plague. I remember years ago working on American Express's loyalty program and thinking noone would be stupid enough to fall for such an obvious ploy. After all why would they give something away unless they expected to get more back and if everyone had identical loyalty programs it would be the consumer who would foot the bill.

How wrong I was and loyalty programs infect all levels of commerce now. Supermarket loyalty cards are particularly pernicious as it not just possible to avoid them by not getting one. Everytime you shop you will be asked if you have one. In the UK (but not yet Australia) it is not just enough to fail to answer: "Do you have a Tescoes card?" in the affirmative (Surely if you ask me a question unrelated to the commercial transaction we are undertaking I have a right to ignore your personal questions and you can take that as a "no" if you wish). They will continue to ask you even if you try any of the following (which I have) (a) ignore them, (b) pretend your iPod is on high and you cant hear them, (c) really, really ignore them. I wondered about this and eventually asked one of the regular cashiers at my local Tesco whom I had been in a war of attrition with for several years. Sometimes he took my prolonged silence as a "no" and sometimes I gave in after repeated questioning and aswered explicitly. I am sure it was wearying for both of us. And the answer: I was shocked to discover that the cashiers are paid a (derisory) bonus of a couple of hundred pounds a year to try to get customers to sign up and Tesco sends in secret operatives to check that they dont just take silence as a no.

Why would they care so much? Because saying "no" everytime is a negative response and most people prefer to avoid being negative. The ironic thing is that supermarket loyalty cards arent actually designed to increase loyalty through rewards. As I correctly surmised all those years ago this is a zero sum game. What the supermarket really wants is a database of your shopping purchases so they can target you with offers aimed at increasing your share-of-wallet. What is wrong with this you ask? Well like any private data is it is yours to give freely and coercing you into signing up for a loyalty program by harassing you at the till everytime you buy something is extremely unethical.

I often fantasised about wearing a t-shirt I could point at when asked that just said "No I dont have a fucking Tescoe's card".

Pump it Out

Coca Cola Amatil has a new soft-drink called "Pumped". I can't quite reproduce that since the "Pump" and "ed" are in different colours. I saw this on the side of a bus which beats surgical cancer scars for a change. I also read the smallprint which was that CCA had trademarked the words"Pump" and "Pumped". Given that this flavoured lolly water is hardly likely to revolutionise the densely packed space of soft-drinks it is safe to assume that all the cost will go into advertising and legal battles to rightfully reclaim the word "pumped" from unliscensed general usuage and return it to Coke - its now rightful owners.

Sitch Bank?

Which bank released one-page ads in the weekend press stating that they would suspend interest payments for householders affected by the Victorian bushfires?

So why then did the ads appear in the national press if they were aimed solely at Victorians? To maximise positive coverage out of a natural disaster. Surely not.

Bushfire Survivor - Who Stays and Who Goes - You Decide.

Commercial news coverage of the bushfires in Australia have all the hallmarks of a branding exercise based on reality tv production values. I wouldn't be suprised if the following are happening:

• production assistants interviewing survivors and firefighters for suitable stories
• survivors auditioning to have their stories told
• editorial meetings where potential stories are discussed and shortlisted
• in depth interviews arranged with network talking heads
• test audience to provide feedback to select final stories for evening broadcast

The purpose of news programs is not just to provide advertising revenue but as a platform for brand loyalty by emphasising the fake values of the monolithic corporate behemoth like "trust", "reliability", "family values" and "entertainment". Disasters and celebrity funerals seem to provide the perfect platform for reinforcing these values and building brand loyalty during the long lean times of the early stages of the football season.

Foxtel Drops the Ball

Foxtel are tailoring their overpriced cable packages to fit these straightened times. An ad on tv last night showed a Foxtel person appearing at the door of a couple.

He: you know Lucy we agreed to tighten our belts. [holds out oversized trousers, cue laugh track]
She: [looks sheepish] well it's not as much as you think, Ricky
He: [getting angry] Well how much is it?
She: The first month is free and it's only a 12 month contract. [recoils from expected slap]

Now wait a darn minute - how is that an answer to his question? It reminds me of an episode of I Love Lucy where Lucille Ball buys a new sofa without asking her husband, Ricky's, permission and he is understandably apoplectic that she has done something so transgressive and emasculating so when he asks how much it costs she replies "not nearly as much as the golf clubs you bought last month" at which point he, predictably, flies into a rage, and threatens to kill her thus subverting the dominant masculine/submissive female discourse through the use of performative clowning, a laugh track and the ironic use of the phrase "why I outta...". Maybe the Foxtel ad writers are paying homage to this classic feminist 50s sitcom.

Or answer (b) it could be because of the confusion that reigns in the Foxtel universe. The small print at the end of the ad said $440 which is $40/month for 11 months. On the other hand a flyer which fell out of my Sunday newspaper said $800 for 12 months. Their website says $440.

This Blog Could Seriously Damage Your Health

Smokers in Australia are confronted with photos of diseased limbs and organs on the packets of their luscious devilsticks. Like most smokers I have learnt to ignore them so I question their value apart from making a few sanctimonious "health care professionals" feel like they have a role in life telling other people what to do. [Takes deep drag on fag to calm down].

In reality the purpose of these pictures is not to educate or warn but to associate negative images with smoking. To this end the images don't need to be of cancerous lungs or emphasymic children or anything related to smoking but could just as well be images of anything a bit sick and gruesome. And since diseased organs no longer have the same impact they need to up the repulsion factor to get us smokers to take notice. Some possibilities:

1. a large pile of vomit
2. dismembered kittens
3. Julie Bishop

I know, I know, that last one is a pretty extreme but they need to think out of the box (or packet).

Rupert Murdoch Lies To His Mother

In an interview in The Australian Dame Elisabeth Murdoch, the centenarian and mother of newspaper mogul Rupert Murdoch, revealed her misgivings about some of the family's more salacious publications like the UK based News of the World or New of the Screws as Private Eye calls it. It has been described as having small words, big headlines and even bigger tits. No wonder Dame Elisabeth, a woman of undoubted grace and civility is loath to be associated with it. But to spare his mother's blushes Rupert explained to her that it was practically a social service as it's readers had nothing else in their lives to do. Presumably except for watching illegal satellite football while smoking toxic weed on sink estates. The Lowest Common Denominator and Rupert is happy to drag even more people into it by lowering their expectations. Of course Rupert himself came from a humble background and dragged himself out of poverty to become a self-made billionaire. Except he didn't. He could hardly lie to his mother about that.

Obama - the Speech He Should Have Made

...and when our childrens' children look back on us in their own times of trouble, for as surely as this one must pass each generation faces anew its own struggles, let us be sure that we are an inspiration to them and not a lesson, a beacon of light and not a bonfire of the vanities, the shoulders on which they stand and not the feet beneath which they were crushed.

And let us no longer ask "Can we do it?".....because of course we know we can. But let us decide "Will we do it?" And I say to you here and now "Yes we will!".

Godblessyallnmerca

A PR Disaster? No such thing.

The number of viral marketing campaigns seems to be increasing exponentially. A couple in Sydney in the last two weeks involve planting fake stories in the media Here. This is more like PR than advertising. PR agencies aim to get their client's as many mentions in the media as they can. Having seen this as a client I can say they appear equally as proud if that mention is in "Grain Financier Monthly" as "The Wall Street Journal". They even get excited about unattributed quotes. Strangely enough the NY based PR firm I used spent a lot of time bitching about each other. Maybe they subscribed to Oscar Wilde's aphorism "The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about" and were just doing each other a favour.

Spoon 4 U

"Are you between 40 and 45?
A white male weighing approximately 110kgs?
Do you live in Australia?
Are you a Spoonlover?
Then we have the perfect gift just for Valentine's Day.
A limited edition spoon for lovers."

This type of advertising is increasingly common on the web, particularly in Facebook where they steal your personal details to make it look like personally targeted advertising when the personal details about age and background are irrelevant. I mean who doesnt love Spoons?

The Real Thing on Reality TV

Product placement as a form of advertising remains controversial. Ad advertisement is seen as a very specific thing designed to coerce the viewer to buy a product. A not so discretely placed can of coke in a movie seems to be break faith with the movie-goer who has already paid for their ticket. In some countries such as the UK where the amount of advertising per hour is strictly limited product placement in tv shows is banned. But the law of unintended consequences will out. What about imported shows from the US? The hugely successful US version of the global franchise "American Idol" is shown in freeview channel ITV2 in the UK. I am a huge fan by the way and watched in the UK for the last three series. It has produced such stars as Jennifer Hudson and the improbably named Fantasia Barrino. It is probably not a coincidence that a program which trawls through the fame aspirations of 300m Americans and Canadians will throw up a much higher standard than the same franchise in the UK and Australia where the singing is of such a poor quality that they don’t bother making comments like “that was a little pitchy for me”.

In America the three judges, Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul and Simon Cowell (why doesn’t this man get more exposure?) have in front of them what appears to be tumblers of some refreshing liquid, occasionally sipped, probably water (maybe not Paula, the well known lush). In the UK transmitted version the obviously branded receptacles have been digitally blurred. Even when they pick them up to their lips or the cameras move they remain obscured. No doubt this is simplicity itself with modern digital technology. Yet I found myself absolutely fascinated by them. Who was the brand they were advertising in the US but were required by law to remove in the UK to protect us from accidental advertising overload? Well here’s a clue. The logo appears to be red and white. In a large tapered glass. Could it be Coka-Cola? So a large part of my viewing time in series 6 and 7 was taken up with trying to see if I could just, just work out the lettering (in a similar way I am always, but not quite able to work out the wording on the Simpsons supermarket lettering in the opening credit. No don’t tell me I’ll get it one day). Given the enormity of this program it was unlikely to be anything other than Coke and this was confirmed when I lived in the US in 2008 and was able to watch it live.

I am sure I have drunk more coke since becoming obsessed with this attempt to obscure the product placement. It was actually a bit of an anti-climax to see finally the judges sipping from clearly branded Coke tumblers. So much so that I almost instantly stopped noticing them and went back to drinking Pepsi.

Going Down in the Lucky Country

Forget the rubbish tourism campaigns based on "Where the Bloody Hell Are Ya?", and "Australia" the movie. How about "The Get Lucky in the Lucky Country" campaign. It would involve some young foreign backpackers seen having the time of their lives while partying hard in a club with celebs Hugh Jackman, Nicole Kidman and Lara Bingle. Eating tapas too of course.

The next morning they wake up a bit worse for wear in a tent and look out on the dawn rising over Ayer's Rock, a Barrier Reef Island or Cable Beach. While they gaze over this beautiful scene an attractive younger lookalike of the Aussie celeb they thought they had scored with the night before also sticks their head out and say "gidday". "Hugh" , "Nicole" or , well actually, it really is Lara Bingle, and then the tag "Australia - it's not called the Lucky Country for nothing".

They could even use Richard Clapton's song "The Lucky Country" which contains the subject line for this post.